France’s language police have issued a decree that seeks to ban the words “fake news” from French, but its proposed Gallic alternative – "information fallacieuse" – is so unwieldy it is unlikely to catch on.
The Commission for the Enrichment of the French Language (CELF) has helpfully offered another possibility for French speakers who want to avoid Anglicisms – “infox.”
The shorter term is a combination of “infos” – an abbreviation of “informations” which means news – and “intox,” which is an informal word for disinformation or a hoax.
"Information fallacieuse" simply means “fallacious information.”
"The Anglo-Saxon expression ‘fake news’, which refers to a range of behaviour contributing to the misinformation of the public, has rapidly prospered in French," the commission lamented.
"This is an occasion to draw on the resources of the language to find French equivalents," said the CELF in a recommendation published in the French government’s official gazette, the Journal Officiel.
The CELF is an offshoot of the august Académie Française, a four-century-old institution whose job is to defend the purity of the French language.
It is made up of a committee of academics and cultural figures who volunteer to suggest ways to improve the French language and to stop it being polluted by the many English expressions or words that millions of French use every day.
It came up with "information fallacieuse" and “intox” after months of deliberation. Other options considered but finally rejected included "craque", "infaux", and "infausse".
The CELF has so far made more than 7,900 suggestions, including French replacements for the English expressions "binge drinking" (beuverie express), “hashtag” (mot-diese), and “big data” (megadonnées).
Some recommendations have been relatively successful, such as the word “courriel” to replace email. But countless others have met with derision and are simply ignored.
A recent example was the suggestion that the French should stop saying “smartphone” and instead use "mobile multifonction.”
The committee has also proposed “l’accès sans fil à internet” for “wifi,” another suggestion that met with little success.
Its suggestions for a smart TV – "televiseur connecté" – or the dark web – "internet clandestin" – have also failed to impress most French speakers.